New Microsoft 365 Features Announced at Inspire 2020

Like other industry events, Microsoft Inspire is going virtual this year, and some new Teams features are among the many announcements. But it’s not just Teams, of course. Microsoft has some other relevant announcements related to Microsoft 365 as well.

Some of these announcements include:

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Microsoft Lists in Microsoft Teams. Microsoft will begin rolling out Lists to its Microsoft 365 customers this month, and it will be integrated into Microsoft Teams in August. A Lists app for iOS is also expected later this year, Microsoft says.

Universal Print. Described as a simple print experience for commercial and educational customers moving to the cloud, Universal Print is a Microsoft software as a service (SaaS) solution that “enables an intuitive, rich and secure print experience for users and helps IT reduce time and effort.” This service was announced this past spring and is now available in public preview.

Yammer improvements. Microsoft has redesigned Yammer on web and mobile using the Fluent Design System. Other previously unannounced capabilities include featured conversations to drive visibility and engagement, support for external guests in communities, and more. This update is now generally available.

Microsoft Teams Rooms. Microsoft Teams is gaining new hybrid meeting experiences with improved device management capabilities via Standard and Premium Microsoft Teams Rooms offerings.

Power BI app for Microsoft Teams. This new app gives people a single place for data visualizations and a way to find more data from across their organization. “The app provides a more streamlined experience for accessing Power BI reports in Teams and provides sample reports, training information and streamlined sharing functionality to help users incorporate data-driven decision-making into their work,” Microsoft notes. It will be available in Teams in August.

Power Apps and Power Virtual Agents chatbot improvements. Creators can now make, manage and use their apps and bots directly in Microsoft Teams through new Teams native app experiences. The new features are powered by Microsoft DataFlex in Teams and provide enterprise relational datastores with rich data types to Microsoft 365 users, Microsoft notes. They are now included for free with select Microsoft 365 and Office 365 licenses that include Power Apps and Power Automate. New Power Apps features will be available in early August in public preview. Power Virtual Agents features will be available in late August in public preview.

More Teams features. Teams is also getting a new interactive Yammer app on mobile called Communities that lets employees participate in their Yammer communities, receive organizational announcements and critical updates, engage in company-wide discussions and join live events alongside their shifts, tasks and project work. Microsoft Teams Walkie Talkie is also now in public preview. A new Teams feature in the Shifts scheduling module will soon make it easier for managers to create team schedules while alerting them to potential schedule conflicts. And Firstline Worker and Manager policy packages are now generally available, allowing IT pros to streamline policy assignment with pre-defined settings tailored for their entire Firstline Workforce.

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Conversation 18 comments

  • blue77star

    21 July, 2020 - 12:29 pm

    <p>They are really moving core of their business to cloud and enterprise. Kudos to them. As a consumer I find all this boring and something won't be personally using. It seems that Apple / Linux are taking over consumer space.</p>

    • jgraebner

      Premium Member
      21 July, 2020 - 2:27 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#555433">In reply to blue77star:</a></em></blockquote><p>Other than as an embedded OS in appliances (and the Android kernel), Linux is pretty much a non-entity in the consumer space. </p>

      • blue77star

        21 July, 2020 - 2:59 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#555483">In reply to jgraebner:</a></em></blockquote><p>For your information Linux has higher market share on desktop than Mac OS. Thank you very much.</p>

        • Craig Smith

          21 July, 2020 - 7:00 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#555495">In reply to blue77star:</a></em></blockquote><p>Mac OS market share is about 9.4%. Linux share across all distros is about 2.2%.</p>

          • blue77star

            22 July, 2020 - 9:52 am

            <blockquote><em><a href="#555555">In reply to craig_smith:</a></em></blockquote><p>3.61% vs. Mac OS 9.62% -&gt; including ancient version of Mac OS.</p>

        • Paul Thurrott

          Premium Member
          22 July, 2020 - 8:47 am

          No, it does not. It’s not even close.

          • blue77star

            22 July, 2020 - 9:55 am

            <blockquote><em><a href="#555640">In reply to paul-thurrott:</a></em></blockquote><p>Linux 3.61% vs. Mac OS 9.62% -&gt; including ancient version of Mac OS. I'd say they are pretty close.</p>

            • Paul Thurrott

              Premium Member
              22 July, 2020 - 11:09 am

              They’re not. Linux is one-third of the Mac, according to your numbers.

              But we don’t go by your numbers.

              Here are the most recent usage share numbers:

              Windows 87.82%
              Mac OS 9.42%
              Linux 2.18%

              Linux usage is 23 percent that of macOS. That’s not “pretty close”. It’s not at all close.

              • blue77star

                22 July, 2020 - 11:42 am

                <blockquote><em><a href="#555693">In reply to paul-thurrott:</a></em></blockquote><p>2.xx is just Ubuntu alone, more accurate number is 3.61% but let's not beat the dead horse. I bet you that it will beat Mac OS by 07/22/2022. With ARM, expect for Mac OS to drop down to 7% very quickly. It will take only a year before Apple realizes what mistake they made with Intel 10nm++ and AMD 5nm generation of CPUs.</p>

                • Paul Thurrott

                  Premium Member
                  22 July, 2020 - 11:56 am

                  Sigh.

                  You can’t contradict me with a nonsense number again and then say the debate is over. The numbers I provided are accurate. The rest of your comment is opinion.

                • pixor

                  22 July, 2020 - 8:26 pm

                  <blockquote><em><a href="#555708">In reply to blue77star:</a></em></blockquote><p>Ho much are you betting, and how do I collect?</p>

                • rmlounsbury

                  Premium Member
                  23 July, 2020 - 9:44 am

                  <blockquote><em><a href="#555708">In reply to blue77star:</a></em></blockquote><p>We'll just ignore that little announcement that Apple made earlier this year that they are moving to their own chips based on ARM design for Mac then?</p>

        • jgraebner

          Premium Member
          23 July, 2020 - 5:04 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#555495">In reply to blue77star:</a></em></blockquote><p>Besides the fact that Mac OS does have a much higher market share, as others have pointed out, there is also the fact that market share and consumer market share aren't the same thing. I would bet on it that the lion's share off the Linux desktop market share is in development houses.</p>

    • dspeterson

      Premium Member
      21 July, 2020 - 2:30 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#555433">In reply to blue77star:</a></em></blockquote><p>That's always been the core of their business?</p><p><br></p><p>Inspire is a conference for their partners, anything they announce at Inspire is going to be business/enterprise focused as well.</p>

      • james.h.robinson

        21 July, 2020 - 2:35 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#555484">In reply to dspeterson:</a></em></blockquote><p>Enterprise should have always been Microsoft's core. I think they messed up under the Ballmer regime when Microsoft tried to be like Apple.</p>

  • GCalais

    21 July, 2020 - 3:37 pm

    <p>They really are killing it with Teams. The list feature looks like a potential Trello killer. Hoping to consolidate my work from home into as few apps as possible, and rooting for Zoom to be dethroned too. </p>

    • madthinus

      Premium Member
      22 July, 2020 - 3:00 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#555504">In reply to GCalais:</a></em></blockquote><p>Teams are really killing me at work ;-)</p>

  • Brian Hodges

    Premium Member
    22 July, 2020 - 9:32 am

    <p>These are great but I wonder how many corporate IT departments will disable these features because of perceived vulnerabilities.</p>

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